Further down the rabbit hole.

From @emerylord:

Step 1: throw everyone else’s ideas of What You’re Supposed to Be Doing in the trash 

Step 2: Proceed

Having taken sex off the table, I’m noticing myself being much more comfortable in / with my body. This is not a small thing; we’re talking about a lifetime of body issues. But now I’m looking in the mirror and seeing a person who’s confident, successful, well loved and sometimes even funny. My self esteem is rising.

It’s opening up other thoughts as well. I had a conversation on Twitter this morning about my changing feels on sexuality. I’ve IDed as bisexual for most of my life. I write stories with sexualised romance between characters of of all genders. Does it mean, given my own changing sexuality, that I can’t write things like erotica anymore?

Of course not. Bisexuality is still a part of my lived experience.

But I’m starting to wonder: I’ve always considered myself kind of prudish. I’m a polyamorous person who isn’t really interested in having sexual intercourse. Anyone who knows me has heard the stories of my being in romantic relationships with guys for sometimes years before the act of intercourse has happened. Interestingly, this isn’t a problem that presents itself when I’m with women. It’s easier for me to have sex with women because my experiences with them have been more inclined towards touching and teasing and stopping to chat and a general closeness and intimacy that has little to do with achieving orgasm as the end point. 

I remember fondly a time before everyone discovered sex. Where you could lie around on a couch when parents weren’t home, kissing and touching and giggling about the new feelings you’ve just discovered. I could have done that forever. What I need can be satisfied by kisses and touching and closeness.

In fact, that’s exactly what I’ve tried to emulate over the years, as many times as I’ve been able to, with almost every partner I’ve ever had and so many wonderful, intimate friends.  

So in short what I’m wondering is, how long have I been having the intercourse because that’s what societally expected within a heterosexual romantic relationship? 

Somehow, before the first time of having intercourse with a new person, it’s seemed permissible to put it off, to be “shy” and “not really ready” in a way that didn’t seem available afterwards. Cause if you’d done it once, why wouldn’t you be ready to go and do THAT again?

I’ve spent so many years feeling like there was something wrong with me, something that made me different to everyone else; made me wrong. I even considered I might have some kind of repressed sexual abuse in my childhood, something I would one day trigger that would make the rest of it make sense.

I always noticed in books that sex happens at a much faster rate than I would be comfortable with. Nobody in them seemed to have hang ups that held them back. Until @rainbowrowell‘s Fangirl and Carry On that I read last year, actually. And I loved them for showing that sex is talked about as something that’s not quite as important as the rest of the intimacy stuff.

Honestly I find sex really messy. Finding body fluids kinda gross is something I had to train myself out of. I’m not unhappy I did it, but I’m just starting to read things that tell me I’m not alone. 

I had never so much as met an asexual person until 18 months ago. 

I feel like I’m starting to go back into my natural state in a slow state of degrees.

In my last post, I complained–as I do–about not having a rule book for my life. Bisexuality, polyamory, even the more recent multi-gendered identifier; those were child’s play with regard to figuring out where I fit in comparison to this. 

And then yesterday morning I woke up to find in my email the beginnings of a Google Document rule book actually written and catered to my last post by one of my partners.